Clik here to view.
Working in a Red Cross Hospital in the Great War .................. Woodlawn...
Woodlawn circa 1915I am back again at Woodlawn which was a Red Cross hospital in Didsbury during the Great War.*I first came across it by accident when researching a book and in the course of peeling...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The way we lived in 1949 Part 2
An occasional series showing adverts in the year I was born.It was ten years since the last world war began and only 4 years since it ended. And reflecting on that decade Picture Post issued a special...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Living that "low dishonest decade," an autobiography of London life in the 1930s
Cover of What Happened to Tom Mix? 1969Now it is not often that you get to read an autobiography of someone you knew.And when I say knew I mean just that. Ted Willis was a writer and politician and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Half a century of looking up the High Street
This is one of those scenes of the High Street which at first glance seems to have changed very little from the first time I wandered up from Well Hall Road in the spring of 1964.Of course like loads...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A century and a bit of offerring bread and cakes at 127 Oswald Road ........
Now I am back on Oswald Road thinking of the house Mr and Mrs Lawton occupied in the January of 1911.127 Oswald Road, 2012It was a story I featured a few days ago and had begun with Peter’s painting of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
As others see us ......... Well Hall in the summer of 1966 by Ian Nairn
The thing about guide books is that they date so quickly. But that can be what makes them so intriguing and that pretty much sums up Nairn’s London.*It was published in 1966 and I picked up my copy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The way we lived in 1949 Part 3
An occasional series showing adverts in the year I was born.It was ten years since the last world war began and only 4 years since it ended. And reflecting on that decade Picture Post issued a special...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Looking out at the allotments towards Sandy Lane sometime in the 1960s
Now here are two images of Chorlton which at first glance look familiar. We are on the allotments with the Park to our rear looking out towards Sandy Lane.Back in 1903 my friend Ann’s grandfather...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In Hulme with a little bit more of our industrial heritage
What I like about Andy Robertson’s work is the way that he consistently records our industrial past much of which is on the cusp of disappearing.But it is more than that because Andy doesn’t just take...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The way we lived in 1949 Part 5
An occasional series showing adverts in the year I was born.It was ten years since the last world war began and only 4 years since it ended.And reflecting on that decade Picture Post issued a special...
View ArticleClik here to view.
It began with a fire and ended as a pile of rubble........... four months in...
Now this is one of those stories where no one got hurt, no great secrets were unearthed and which in all probability would have passed quietly into the shadows.The news that the warehouse on Hulme Hall...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Looking at some 18th century cottages on Avery Hill Road in New Eltham
Now these properties I had no idea existed nor that there was anything this old along this part of New Eltham.So there you are a little bit of the 18th century in New Eltham and a description of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
With granddad and his cup of soup outside the Post Office on Wilbraham Road
Now I bet a lot of people remember the TV advert for Heinz soup with granddad.But I had completely forgotten that it also appeared on posters until Ursula shared this picture with me.We are on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pizza, pesto and a trip up country ........... getting closer to my Canadian...
Until recently I had no idea just how deeply my family’s past was linked to Canada.Our connections with Germany and Italy were pretty straightforward but the Canadian side rested on a few stories of my...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A little bit of the American Civil War in Southern Cemetery ..............
I doubt that many will expect to come across a memorial in Southern Cemetery to a man who had fought in the American Civil War and who had received the Medal of Honour for gallantry.He was Philip James...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The way we lived in 1949 Part 6
An occasional series showing adverts in the year I was born.It was ten years since the last world war began and only 4 years since it ended. And reflecting on that decade Picture Post issued a special...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A family of seven in a two roomed cottage on the Row, ........ one up one...
It is hard today to imagine bringing up a family in just two rooms and yet many people here in the township during the 19th century and before did just that.These were houses with just two rooms often...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Back at Hough End Hall, horses, bombs and a motel
Now there is nothing more exciting to anyone interested in the past than the memories of people who were there.You can trawl through official documents, scan the maps and pictures of a period or place...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A little bit of the Woolwich I remember
Now I am back with another of those excellent photographs of Woolwich from the collection of Stephen Bardrick.I don’t have a date but it can be no earlier than 1935 when the Woolwich opened its grand...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Twenty years of French history
This poster covers a big chunk of my life and has been with us since before the lads were born.It dates from 1980 celebrates, twenty years of the French Socialist Party and was brought back from Paris...
View Article